The Night I Woke Up Beside You

THE NIGHT I WOKE UP BESIDE YOU After catching the very first man she ever loved whom she was about to marry in five months, kissing someone else, and eventually confessing his affair to her over the phone, Regina Harding, driven by her misery, leads herself face-to-face with death but is soon miraculously brought back to life. But rather than seeing herself in the hospital, she surprisingly wakes up on the same night when she had first lost her virginity with the same man she fell in love with... ten years ago. Realizing that she had leaped through time and was brought back to the days when she was still sixteen and pretty oblivious of the upcoming tragic fate with her first love, Regina tries to alter everything that might lead up to that... But would redoing all her decisions ever really help her in avoiding future disappointment? What will happen once her efforts of changing the outcome become another set of fallbacks that she could never really get to handle alone? And what about that young handsome bad boy-next-door who seemed to have been the very root cause of her future heartbreak? Can she ever really save him if that means it will also save her future love life after all? Can she even avoid the impending pain? Or will this all just be in vain? DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PRESENT, April of 2020 She can't clearly see anything through the windshield. It looked like the rain had been pouring down the glass but not really... It was her eyes that had been filled with overflowing tears, flooding her cheeks and face, as she aggressively propelled past through another intersection without much regard to the yellow lights blinking above her. She heard loud honkings of cars behind her, but she did not care about them. She just kept driving faster, her foot pressing harder on the gas pedal.  Get me out of here, was her only selfish thought at the time. Just get me out of here. The signboard on the side of the road that she had driven past by just said farewell to her. She had now exited the borders of the state and soon, she will be stopping to pay for toll in the next few miles. But upon realizing that, she also noticed that her gas was running low, but she did not want to stop anywhere yet. Her phone vibrated once again from the console. My love, it showed on the caller ID when she gave it a short glance. Love, my ass. And she gritted her teeth out of disgust. She did not want to answer it, her fingers dug on the steering wheel. Hell, no. She could not. She knew that once she hears his voice again, she would immediately remember everything from what she had seen just a while ago. But as if on cue, even with just thinking about his face, as she thought about him, instantly brought a clear flash of memory inside her head and she uncontrollably burst out crying again. Her emotional release had been so loud and she knew she looked so ugly this time, but no one can ever really hear or see her inside the car. She was all alone. She can cry all she wants. She was hurt... Betrayed. The pain was so shocking she did not even have enough time to take it all in. How could he? HOW COULD HE? Regina Harding, twenty-six years old, engaged, was supposed to marry the first and only man she ever loved her whole life. But now, that future was gone. She was torn into pieces, for thinking her life was perfect... How can she expect life to be that perfect? The tears continued to flow like a river down her face and even when she was having a hard time getting a good sight of the road she was driving on, she did not slow down. She was trying to get rid of her misery, which was so stupid and could be really dangerous but all of her sanity had been thrown out of the window since that second she saw what happened. Charles kissing someone else. Charles professing his love for someone else... Five months before they were supposed to get married. What the hell? This was not a drama at all. Was she supposed to laugh and think of it as a joke now? No. What should she even feel? The only thing Regina could think of right now is to ruin everything about Charles and his perfect one-woman-man image. Was that a lie too? What else did she not know about? Which part was the truth? His promise, his proposal, his kisses? What was real, and what was fake? Regina felt like her whole world was slowly crumbling apart. How can she get through this pain? How can she tell... Oh, god... How can she tell people about this? The very thought instantly shook Regina as she began to hyperventilate.  Then, she jolted and got distracted when her phone rang again. And while Regina was still in the middle of processing everything in her mind, she finally mustered the courage to answer the call in an impulse. Charles's breathless voice came in as soon as the line went through and he sounded extremely nervous and frightened. "Regina," he sounded hoarse and it made her think that he was also crying and looking like a mess, "Let's talk in person, please. Come meet me at our apartment later." How was she supposed to meet him again? Did he even realize what will happen to them after this? What about the wedding? Their parents, their families? The people that they have invited? The wedding plans? The honeymoon trip? What about the things that she had been planning in her future with him? White-picket fence, regular family dinners, cozy evenings and kisses, three-point five children, and all that? "Get lost," she bravely shunned him, her voice dripping with hostility and anger. It felt like all the love that she had reserved for him from all the years that they used to be together and thinking that she was the only one for him, had been plucked out from its roots and got burned into ashes. All that was left now was only hatred for him. I don't want to see you anymore.  "Regina, please," Charles begged with a desperate tone, cracking on the last word as he spoke, "Please just let me explain wha--" "Explain?! Explain what? You cheating?!?" Regina screeched, all broken down as she completely lost all of her control. She sounded so mad and hysterical that she did not even realize she was already driving past ninety miles per hour on an expressway with only eighty-five miles per hour limit.  Her only intention was to get away but this was now bordering past safety and she knew she might get into an accident, but she was too focused on her own emotional pains that even minding her reckless driving was no longer something she cared about. She was not this kind of person at all, but for some reason, this entire day just made her feel like she can never go back to the way she had used to be anymore.  "You... You f--... You lied to me, Charles," Regina went on, biting the inside of her cheek while she struggled to hold off the expletives by taking a long wistful breath. For a moment, she felt her entire chest relaxing as she partially let a portion of her agony out.  "How could you? HOW COULD YOU?" Can she ever really accept any kind of damned explanation he would give anyway? For over ten years, she had loved this boy who had become the man of her dreams and became the man she had wanted to marry, but in just a blink of an eye, everything went down. When she saw him, with that woman... that kid with them. That kid... "Tell me the truth, Charles," Regina sobbed upon recalling that vivid picture inside her head. She felt the deep slicing pain hit her very soul for every word she was forcing herself to say, "Since when? Since when have you been doing this to me?" The view of the road now had gotten clearer, since her tears had finally dried up as she drove on a straight path. There were no other cars, so she kept the speed on. Yet she knew she should be careful, but her mind was still reeling back to the questions she was waiting for him to answer. "I.." Charles hesitated and paused for a few seconds. His delayed response was taking all the patience away from her but she still waited, "I... I really... Regina, I..." "Just f*****g say it!" "Four years ago." Charles regretfully confessed, his voice had gotten even smaller and Regina almost did not hear his words if she had not taken the phone off from the console and clutched it tighter against her ear to get a better hearing of his words. Four years ago? She can only bitterly laugh.  That freaking long? He had been doing this to her, lying to her, even got to the point where he proposed to her... while all this freaking time, he already had someone else in his mind? What the f**k? "You lying bastard!"  "Regina, please..." "YOU BASTARD! What about that kid? Was he your child? You f*****g propose to me even when you already cheated?!" The other end of the line did not respond back to her. She felt his deafening silence a definite reply. As if it had already given her the answer. His lie was the answer. And as simple as that, the whole future flashed before her eyes, and she could no longer see anything... There was nothing there anymore. The entire idea of her life in the next five years had all faded into black. She felt so alone. "I hate you," The emphasis on her words was mirroring the increase in her speed that was now going over ninety miles per hour. She was going overboard and her anger was consuming her at once. She can see the end of the road, there was a sharp turn ahead, but she kept repeating the words and just blindly sped through it. "I hate you," she dumbly intoned, "I hate you so much. I hate you... You f*****g liar! Bastard! Cheater! I wish I never fell in love with you! I wish we had never gotten together! I hate you!" There were things at those last few seconds while Regina was pouring out everything she had been feeling inside her, that had slowly made her realize some of the biggest regrets she could ever do in her life. There were just a few things that one can only regret and truthfully feel bad about, right after doing something irrevocable. And at that moment, failing to avoid the end of the road ahead of her, failing to read the signs of Charles cheating behind her back, were just only two of the greatest regrets she had ever made in her entire existence. But then, she was already too late. And that should have been an early warning if she had been looking out carefully. To which, she did not. And now, she can no longer take it back. Her future, her love, her life... Everything that she cared about, were all soon being taken away. And as the end of her journey moved in a slow-motion before her, she can only let it happen without much anything to do right there, inside her car, her phone falling down from her grasp, the steering wheel abandoned, and her eyes wet with tears... And like a scene from a movie, her car moved past and hit through the barricades. She failed to take the turn, in one single mistake. But such a single mishap could have done so much for her. She was going to die. And as she felt her entire life slipping away from her grasp, only seven words came out of her lips. The last seven words that she could ever really get to say in the last few moments that were left for her to have in this lifetime... "I wish we had never gotten together." And right after that, everything instantly went to black. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------next chapter